Chance Encounter

A Christmas wreath for Robin. I usually buy one to hang on the front door but this afternoon

I carry it to his grave instead. I'm surprised the rose petals I scattered are still fresh. And a dog has used the earth clods as a toilet. I curse its owner.  It's spitting with rain. And windy. Desolate.

I'm right back to the day we buried him. Tearful. Numb. Unbalanced.

Walking out of the cemetery I hear a woman's voice. American. She is just leaving the porch of her house which is the gatehouse of the cemetery. I recognise her but she doesn't know me. I am not like my father, who always used to talk to people in the street, but something prompts me and I stop and I say,

Hello, are you a poet?

She says, Yes I am. And she is delighted to be known. 

I tell her I have been to one of her poetry readings at the library, many years ago, and that I have one of her books. 

She says, You must have my new one,

 and she goes back into the house, invites me in. I say my boots are muddy, so she comes out with the book and gives it to me. I say I have no money on me. She says  Oh no, just make a donation to Hospice Care sometime. 

 She gives me a hug. And says what a coincidence we were passing at the same time.

She notices my camera, indicates the cemetery and asks if I've been taking pictures there.

I say, My husband died.

Her face becomes so sad and she gives me another hug.

She is so tall and warm, wrapped in jaunty purple scarf and I imagine she's quirky and a bit scatty and we say goodbye as if we have always been friends.

At home I start to read her poems and my breath is punched out of me by the force and acuity and raw beauty/pain and reach of her words.

My spirits are so raised by our chance encounter. Maybe not chance though.

Her book is The Skin of Mercy.   Published by Cinnamon Press.

She is Dana Littlepage Smith.

The baking of my day - honey gold Medjoul dates stuffed with almond butter and walnuts and roll dipped in dark chocolate, specked with pistachios.

 Jewel glazed light fruit cake( thank you, Nigel) - an alternative to the royal iced Christmas one. I left it too late anyway to make that one which needs time to mature. Which needs to be fed with brandy.

My traditional mincemeat shortbread squares. I used  up the mincemeat I made last year. It smells alcoholic - maybe it has gone off. Too late now.

I would like to be a poet but I think my vocabulary isn't wide enough. To marry the language of emotion with a dictionary of meaning.... to pierce the essence of it....to turn over another's heart with words - now that is an art I would love to learn....to go beyond the poison of comparison....to not fall at the first hurdle of,

  How does she do that? I could never do that.